CHAPTER XII.

“GOOD MRS. BROWN.”

Early next morning Prudence carefully locked all the doors of her own room and of her sister’s apartment and went round to the stationer’s to see if a letter had come for her from X. Y. Z. With much relief she picked out, from a bundle of others, a missive addressed to P. S., and proceeded to read it. It was tolerably written and spelled, the paper was clean, and the communication was signed “Mrs. Brown.” “Mrs. Brown” agreed to meet Prudence at nine o’clock that evening in the first-class waiting room at London Bridge Station, and had no doubt they would come to terms. “She was prepared,” she said, “to take the pretty little dear and treat it with a mother’s love,” and regretted that she was unable to make an appointment earlier in the day “on account of family reasons.”

Perilous as was the delay to Prudence, she was pleased with the letter. The writer, if not a person of culture, was evidently kind and respectable, so she resolved to be patient, and bear the strain of the situation for a few hours longer.

Her next move was to purchase a feeding bottle, for her previous efforts to make Augusta swallow milk had been singularly unsuccessful, and she was filled with uneasiness lest her sister might be starved to death. She then returned home, fed Augusta, washed her, and dressed her in the garments provided by Whiteley, and finally proceeded to explain to her the measures she had taken.

“I have told you already,” she said, “that if you remained like this it would be impossible to keep you here. They all look suspiciously at me downstairs, and I really believe they think you have either got the plague, or else that I am slowly poisoning you. Mrs. Wilcox spoke to me again about getting a doctor, and I am afraid that at any moment she may come with one, and insist on his seeing you. Now, I have our good name to consider, and I know that if you are not sent away, and sent speedily, Miss Lord will be capable of breaking in the door. Then, if you are discovered, we shall simply be lost. As for telling the truth, they wouldn’t believe me if I swore to it. It is no use your objecting, Augusta, if you mean that squirm for an objection. You have got yourself and me into this hole, and the least you can do is to be quiet and help me to avoid scandal. There you go again. What on earth do you mean? If you want me to keep you here until Mrs. Geldheraus replies, it simply can’t be done. She may not write for a week, and every moment I am running risk of discovery. No, I shall convey you away to-night, whatever happens. Every question asked about you sends my heart into my mouth. I have been making arrangements for your comfort. You are to go to a nice, respectable, married woman, who has no children of her own. She guarantees you a good home, with the care and affection of a mother. I have thought out everything. When you are gone, I shall send some of our boxes to Paddington Station as a blind. I had better stay on here for a week or a fortnight after you, just to disarm suspicion. By that time we shall know what Mrs. Geldheraus can do for you, and we must shape our future actions accordingly. Gracious Heaven! if she says she can do nothing for you, what will become of us? I suppose I shall have to pretend you are dead, and rear you somewhere as my adopted daughter! It is a horrible position to be placed in. I am getting hardened to telling falsehoods to those people downstairs, and yet I tremble at the life of deceit I see before me. We shall have to avoid all our friends—everyone who has known us. If I were even sure you would gradually grow up as an ordinary baby does, I might look forward to your speaking in a year or so, and then you might advise me what to do, but if you remain always dumb, and always a baby——!”

Overcome by her troubles, and by the long vista of difficulties she saw opening before her, poor Prudence sobbed aloud.

There was much to be done, however, so she bathed her eyes, powdered her flushed cheeks, and proceeded to pack up such indispensable articles as would be needed by Augusta. She kept to her room as much as possible all day. At dinner she announced that her sister was better, and that she herself might possibly spend the evening with some friends, so requested that the front door might be left unchained, to permit of her letting herself in with a latch-key that she borrowed from Major Jones. Nobody made any comment. The general opinion as to her treatment of her poor suffering sister, was too strong to admit of anything short of the whole truth being spoken.

Prudence, congratulating herself therefore on having acted so well, slipped upstairs and arrayed herself in a black hat, a thick veil, and a long cloak. Augusta she tucked up warmly in an old shawl, gave her her feeding bottle, and, having hidden her under the voluminous folds of the mantle, peeped cautiously out to make sure the coast was clear. Not a soul was in sight, so Prudence, with as guilty an air as if she were carrying off Mrs. Wilcox’s silver, crept downstairs, opened the front door, and closed it softly behind her.

She scarcely breathed until she was clear of Beaconsfield Gardens, and so closely did she keep Augusta pressed to her bosom, that when she perceived what she was doing a spasm of terror shot through her.

“How quiet she is,” she thought. “Perhaps I have smothered her.”

A glance reassured her, and she sped onwards. Suddenly her knees seemed to give way. Advancing towards her, but as yet unconscious of her presence, was old Major Jones, who had just stepped out of a tobacconist’s shop, and was smoking a postprandial cigar. Prudence darted across the road, turned down a side street, and terrified of meeting someone else who knew her, ran all the way to South Kensington Station.

There was no one in the first-class ladies’ waiting-room at London Bridge Station when Prudence arrived with her charge, except an elderly person on guard in a battered black bonnet and a woollen crochet shoulder shawl. It wanted twenty minutes of the time fixed by Mrs. Brown for the meeting, so Prudence, feeling really weak and ill from excitement and lack of food, that for two days she had been unable to taste, gave the female sixpence to hold Augusta, while she partook of a cup of tea in the refreshment room.

As she returned, piercing yells were audible long before she reached the waiting-room, and hastily entering she found her sister purple in the face, and bent backwards like a bow in the arms of the attendant.

Her nurse was jogging her roughly up and down, regarding her the while with an eye of dissatisfaction, not to say of dislike.

“I’m glad you’ve come back, ma’am,” she said, rising hastily as Prudence entered, and holding out her charge at arm’s length. “This baby o’ yours is the very crossest child I ever did see. I thought at first there was a pin in her clothes may be—it’s a little girl, ain’t it?—but I looked, and there’s never a one to be found, so it’s temper, so it is—and if I was you, ma’am, meaning no offence, I’d spank her well, young as she is, to take the mischief out of her. You can’t begin too soon with that sort. Just look what she’s done to my face!”

There certainly was a scratch on the old woman’s nose.

Prudence took her sister in silence, and tried to soothe her. Augusta, she knew, was fastidious, and probably disliked being held by the snuffy old caretaker, yet she could not help considering that under the circumstances the infliction might have been borne. Still, the baby continued to yell so that the people looked in to see what was the matter. She made prolonged efforts to disengage one leg from her lengthy and cumbersome draperies, till attracted by the frequency of the movement, Prudence examined her more closely. As she turned up the robe, Augusta stopped crying. There on her red-mottled limb was a nasty blue mark, where the irritated caretaker had given her a pinch.

Under other circumstances the tender-hearted Prudence would have remonstrated with the woman on her cruelty to a helpless infant. As it was, she did not dare risk a scene, so took an opportunity to whisper sympathy to Augusta, and implore her to be patient.

After many anxious glances at the clock, the hands marked the hour named by Mrs. Brown, and, at the moment, a bustling, fresh-complexioned woman of about five-and-fifty, stout and respectably dressed, hurried into the room, and, first casting a comprehensive glance around, walked over to Prudence, and said,

“Excuse me, ma’am, but are you here with reference to a child?”

“Are you Mrs. Brown?” asked Prudence, favourably impressed by her appearance of cleanliness and her businesslike manner.

“Yes, ma’am, I ham Mrs. Brown, otherwise X. Y. Z.—‘good Mrs. Brown,’ they calls me down our wy; and you, ma’am, I suppose are P. S.?”

“Yes,” said Prudence faintly.

“And this is the dear baby? Pitty ickle sing!” said Mrs. Brown, making a dab with a motherly forefinger at Augusta’s cheek. Augusta looked at her very hard, and Prudence could not help hoping that she was as favourably impressed as herself.

“Yes,” she said, “this is the baby I wish you to take charge of, and on whom I hope you will bestow motherly care.”

“That, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Brown, “you may rest assured on. How old is the little dear?”

Prudence was all confusion.

“I really don’t know,” she faltered. “A few years—I mean a few months old—about six weeks, perhaps.”

“Is the baby your own, ma’am?” enquired Mrs. Brown in a tone of surprise.

“Oh, dear, no!” cried Prudence aghast. “It is not my child at all. As a matter of fact, I am not married.”

“Indeed! You’ll excuse me asking the question, ma’am; but in a matter of business like this you understand one has to be particular, with such a fine, comfortable, ’appy ’ome as I’ve to offer too; and might I enquire exactly what relation the pretty dear is to you? All communications, ma’am, are treated in strict confidence.”

“She is my sister.”

“Your sister!” gasped Mrs. Brown, looking Prudence up and down. “Oh! your _sister’s_. And now, ma’am, excuse my asking, but is your sister a married lady?”

“Of course not,” said Prudence, adding with a sickly smile, “I think you might be pretty sure of that?”

“_Of course not!_” repeated Mrs. Brown under her breath in a tone of deep astonishment. “_Of course_ not!” adding to herself, happily unheard by Prudence, “well, of all the braigen! and she lookin’ so quiet too.”

“Well, ma’am,” she continued aloud, “under them circumstances of course you understand my terms is according.”

“According to what?”

“To them circumstances, ma’am.”

“They are unusual,” admitted Prudence, “and I am quite prepared to remunerate you amply for any trouble you take with this dear child.”

“That child, ma’am, though I say it, is a fortunate child in comin’ to one as’ll give her—it’s a little girl, isn’t it?—as’ll give her a mother’s care and love; and take her I can’t, ma’am, for less than a premium of fifty pounds down an’ a weekly payment of one pound.”

“It seems a good deal for a baby.”

“No, ma’am, it’s not a good deal, it’s cheap, too cheap maybe, but I’ve my nater’l feelings, an’ I’ve took to the child, so I’m makin’ terms for you an’ your sister as I wouldn’t for another lydy in a similar case.”

“Well, unfortunately,” said Prudence timidly, “I did not expect to have to pay so much, and only brought a smaller sum with me.”

“How much?” asked good Mrs. Brown briefly.

“Twenty pounds,” said Prudence. “You see I never had to—was concerned in—I mean I never before had anything to do with babies, at least in this way, and I thought—that is to say, twenty pounds seemed a good deal, especially as I am to make you regular weekly payments as well.”

“Twenty pounds!” shrieked Mrs. Brown. “Is it twenty pounds for a mother’s care and love and dooty, and a comfortable ’ome an’ no unpleasant questions asked?”

“Of course not, of course not,” said Prudence hastily. “I see now it was too little, but how am I to manage about the matter, as I have not got fifty pounds here?”

Mrs. Brown looked at her keenly. “I’ll trust you, ma’am,” she said, “for I’m that soft-’earted, an’ I’ve took to the child. Pay me the twenty down, an’ send me thirty in Bank of England notes—none o’ yer cheques—within twenty-four hours, and I’ll take the little darling away.”

“Very well,” said Prudence relieved. “I will do as you say; but oh! Mrs. Brown, be sure you take every care of her, let her want for nothing;” and two big tears stood in the good-natured creature’s eyes.

“Madam,” answered Mrs. Brown, “it’s a lucky child as comes to me; and now will you please give me your name and address, and just write a promise to pay on this ’ere bit of paper, and hand me over the twenty pounds and I’ll give you a receipt; and give me the byby, for my train is about due, and you’ve got my name and address, and I expects to be notified whenever you’re a coming to see the byby, and I never allows as payments to be more than a week in arrears, or I brings back the child.”

Prudence was rather bewildered by Mrs. Brown’s last lengthy and rapid speech, “I never allows no payments to be more than a week in arrears.”

What could she mean by that? It really sounded as if she were familiar with transactions of the kind, but surely no respectable married woman, so nice in appearance too, even though her grammar was not faultless, would need more than one child to adopt; so, telling herself she had misunderstood, Prudence paid down the twenty pounds, kissed Augusta, saw Mrs. Brown and that infant into the train, and then relieved, yet with many cares on her mind, made her way back to Beaconsfield Gardens.

Meantime Mrs. Brown, who watched her standing on the platform until the train moved out of the station, began to feel she had made a bad bargain.

“I was a bloomin’ idiot not to arsk thirty bob,” she muttered, “an’ a ’undred down. She’s that soft she’d ’ave given it. There! stow it, you brat!” she added with sudden fury, turning to Augusta, who had set up a dismal wail.